Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #405, Through and Through (HBP 17, A Sluggish Memory)
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: Welcome to MuggleCast Episode 405. I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Micah Tannenbaum: I’m Micah.
Laura Tee: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: On today’s show, we’re going to be talking about Half-Blood Prince, Chapter by Chapter – we’re going to go into Chapter 17, “A Sluggish Memory” – and we have a lot of news to discuss today as well. It’s funny; it just ebbs and flows. One week we have zero news at all; the next week there’s four interesting stories to talk about.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: Andrew, you’re back. That’s our biggest news, though.
Andrew: Yes, and thank you for making the 404 joke. I appreciate it. It was very well done; I wish I had thought of it.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: I think we just made up the news last week.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Is that accurate? “Why isn’t J.K. Rowling tweeting?”
Andrew: Well, you guys should have intro’ed that differently; you should have said, “The news is that there’s no news. There’s no J.K. Rowling. What’s going on?” And let’s just bring that up now; we’re now on day 28 of no J.K. Rowling on Twitter. I’m starting to get heart palpitations and headaches.
Eric: Hashtag #RowlingWatch.
Andrew: I’m not feeling well. I need her back on social media.
Laura: [laughs] I think that we could just come up with something really ridiculous that she’s revealed about the wizarding world, like, I don’t know, wizards crapping themselves and disappearing their poop.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: We made the J.K. Rowling tweet, since you all miss them.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: I do kind of like the theory that she’s annoyed with what’s going on with Fantastic Beasts. [laughs] Maybe WB annoyed her, and she just decided to leave Twitter. Because I looked it up; she left Twitter six days before the news broke that they were delaying the start of Fantastic Beasts, so maybe she found out around that time, and then it took the media a few days later to catch on, but… or she’s just on vacation, or she’s just on a social media break.
Eric: I said this last week, but I just would have expected an announcement of some sort.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: It doesn’t need to be high stakes; it could just be like, “Hey folks, I’m getting off here for a little bit.”
Andrew: Yeah, sometimes people do that. It’s kind of cool to say you’re leaving social media these days. I know I do it.
Eric: Right? Right?
Andrew: Around Christmas. “I’m leaving, everybody. Goodbye. Good day.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Well, we will keep everybody posted.
Micah: I think Trump reported her.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Trump reported her. You know, we got a review recently, Micah, saying, “Stop bringing up Trump.” A Republican asked that.
Micah: I wonder why.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: I did not realize that Paul Manafort listened to this show. That’s so cute.
[Andrew laughs]
News
Andrew: All right, so let’s talk about some real news now. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is opening in San Francisco this October, and tickets are going to be on sale in March. And if you are planning on trying to get a ticket, it’s probably going to be very difficult, because for a lot of people in America, this is their first time they’re going to be able to see the show. You can sign up for early registration – that is open now – to get access to “Priority access,” whatever that means. I don’t know if this is a verified fan thing, like Ticketmaster did in the US – or sorry, in New York – but yeah, if you’re looking to get tickets for Cursed Child in San Francisco, then hit that link. Go to the Cursed Child‘s website. Little bit of gossip talk about this week. I love some gossip; who doesn’t love some gossip? I think we brought up on a previous installment of bonus MuggleCast that Universal is building a new theme park; they’re planning on building a new theme park, and they’ve been planning on calling it Fantastic Worlds. And in the bonus MuggleCast, we were talking about, “Isn’t that really close to Fantastic Beasts? Why are they calling it Fantastic Worlds? That’s kind of surprising.” Well, Warner Bros. is surprised as well. They have now filed two requests for an extension of time to oppose this trademark. [laughs] So Universal has not been approved for the Fantastic Worlds trademark yet, because WB is saying, “Hold up! I think this violates one of our trademarks.” And presumably Warner Bros. isn’t cool with it, because they think it’s too close to Fantastic Beasts, their current franchise. Do you guys agree? Is it too close of a name to Fantastic Beasts?
Laura: I mean…
Micah: No.
Laura: I don’t know that anybody can claim to have a trademark on the word “Fantastic.” [laughs]
Andrew: No, but I think the concern is people are going to be looking at this Fantastic Worlds theme park – this is going to be an entire theme park, not just a land – and thinking it’s Harry Potter-related.
Micah: I mean, maybe if they were going to call it Fantastic Busts.
Andrew: Bus?
Micah: Busts.
Andrew: Why would they call it that?
Micah: Never mind.
Andrew: Okay.
Micah: The joke sailed way over.
Laura: [laughs] Did not land.
Eric: Yeah, I’m lost.
Micah: It did not land.
Andrew: All right, well, I don’t… I seem to care about this way more than you guys do. I think it’s pretty dramatic that Warner Bros. is holding them up, especially because Warner Bros. and Universal have a cozy relationship thanks to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter land.
Eric: It’s just so… I read that this is confirmed, that if they did go forward with Fantastic Worlds, that they would have a Harry Potter… so a new dedicated Harry Potter section?
Andrew: Yeah, and I presume that this would be where they’d put a Fantastic Beasts land. They’ve got to do that now, right? They can’t do another Harry Potter one without doing Fantastic Beasts.
Eric: I’m surprised they haven’t already in the normal park, so that’s kind of my hesitation. But yeah, I don’t know, because it seems like this new Fantastic Worlds, they have a dedicated set of other areas that would not be Harry Potter. I wonder if it wouldn’t be more realistic to just let Islands of Adventure slowly become the one Harry Potter theme park, and then have Fantastic Worlds be some of the other properties. I don’t know, it just… Harry Potter has overtaken both of the parks that it already is in.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, they want to create another park because then people will stay longer at the Universal hotels, and just more money there. Apparently Fantastic Worlds is going to be where the Nintendo land is going to be as well, which I’m very excited for.
Eric: Man.
Andrew: Anyway, that’s what’s going on there.
Micah: The only thing that I can think of is maybe they don’t want to create confusion.
Andrew: Right.
Micah: If Fantastic Beasts is going to be a part of this particular park, then does that tie it into the other things that are in it, like Nintendo and…? That would probably be the only thing that I can think of. But why not just, to the point that was raised, expand the Wizarding World more and don’t even worry about what they’re creating in the other part of their park?
Andrew: Yeah. It’d be crazy if they extended the train or something, so that it went to that third land.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: Oh, man.
Laura: Maybe they can just come up with a different name that’s more in keeping… why don’t they call it Adventure Worlds? Like Islands of Adventure. Adventure Worlds can be the other one.
Micah: There you go.
Andrew: Yeah. More Universal. Universal-more.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Definitely Universal-more. Yeah, apart from not necessarily owning the trademark for the word “Fantastic,” it is a branding concern, and it is a question of… because Fantastic Beasts is one of the only properties using that word now, so you just kind of assume that it’s connected.
Andrew: Exactly. That’s why I’m so shocked by this, A, that Universal would do this, and B, that WB actually is concerned as well. I mean, there’s something there if they’re concerned. I imagine they were doing some research or something, maybe some… what’s that called, when you do surveys with people? Maybe they’re doing surveys to figure out if people get confused by this.
Eric: Market research, surveys, that kind of thing.
Andrew: Market, right.
Micah: Speaking of the park, though, how close are we to the new ride opening?
Andrew: I don’t know; they haven’t announced a date, but they’re still building. It’s going to be this year; we just don’t know when this year. They’re also building an entire new hotel called Endless Summer, so I think they’re going to try to open those up around the same time.
Eric: God, that makes, like, nine hotels, and the last five of them were built without any significant upgrades to the park. So I’m blown away.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, it’s all thanks to Harry Potter; people are turning out big time thanks to those two lands.
Eric: Yeah, gosh.
Andrew: Laura, I know that you and I have had a smashing time at the original land, but have you been to Diagon Alley?
Laura: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: You love it?
Laura: Oh, yeah, it’s amazing. Sorry, I just got a frog in my throat.
Andrew: [laughs] A Chocolate Frog.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Yeah. [clears throat] No, I loved it. I got to go a few years ago, I think.
Andrew: Okay, cool.
Laura: It was amazing. I just don’t know which one I like better.
Andrew: Yeah, it is tough, isn’t it? They’re both really fantastic. [laughs]
Eric: Hah, uh-oh!
[Laura groans]
Andrew: All right, so Eric, you brought up Larry Poppins in Lego Movie 2 last week, and now you’ve seen it?
Eric: [laughs] Yeah, so I’ve seen Lego Movie 2. We mentioned last week Dan Radcliffe was either scheduled to or did a cameo in The Lego Movie 2 that was cut, and his character – he was going to play a knockoff Harry Potter called “Larry Potter” – was replaced by a Mary Poppins knockoff, Larry Poppins. And I’ve got to say, the cameo is actually the first one in the film, where it’s a cutaway joke, so it happens quite early on in the movie. And Larry Poppins, it’s fine, but it’s a cameo. Now that I’ve seen it, I know that… the question was… the director had said that they pulled the Dan Radcliffe cameo because it would upset Harry Potter fans, and I have to say, having seen this cameo, that it was completely innocuous. It was zero stakes.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: There was no reason why it couldn’t have been Larry Potter, although I would have been upset, because Larry Poppins does not come back at all the rest of the film, so if they were going to have Dan Radcliffe on board, I would have liked to have seen him in more of a substantial role. But I really don’t think anybody would have been offended if it had just been Larry Potter.
Micah: But isn’t that what a cameo is? Just a quick appearance?
Andrew: Blink and you miss it.
Eric and Micah: Yeah.
Andrew: Eric wants his money back, it sounds like.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Onto a little Fantastic Beasts news, Crimes of Grindelwald is out digitally next weekend. It comes out February 15. We’re going to be off next week because a couple of us have other things going on, but in two weeks, I think we will host a discussion on things that we notice while watching it at home, which will be fine, because we’ll be able to pause it and maybe look at some details that we didn’t notice in the theater, so I’m really looking forward to that. Again, Crimes of Grindelwald will be out digitally February 15, and then next month, in March, it’ll be out for on DVD and Blu-ray, and that’s when we’re going to get the extended edition with the deleted scenes. So we have to wait a little bit longer for those. But in the meantime, I’m excited to see the movie at home. And one more news story: Dan Fogler spoke to a website called HeyYouGuys.com. He’ll apparently talk to anybody.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Micah: Except us.
Andrew: Never heard of this website before.
Eric: [imitating Sloth in The Goonies] “Hey, you guys!”
Andrew: And he was talking about a bunch of different things, but they asked him about the Fantastic Beasts production delay, and he said it’s been delayed because the movie is “gigantic.” “The reason we were given is that the movie is bigger than the first two combined. They needed more time to prep and they didn’t want to rush anything, so they pushed it back.”
[Laura sighs]
Andrew: Dan also said they are going to Brazil in the movie, which J.K. Rowling has been hinting at but never confirmed. And yeah, so we know for sure they’re going to Brazil. I was surprised that Dan Fogler would say, after the reception to Movie 2, that it’s bigger than the first two combined. That scares me a little bit.
Laura: Yeah, not really what I wanted to hear.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Yeah, I want to hear, “We’re getting back to basics, like the first movie.” [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, a bigger film is… and you mentioned this in your article on Hypable, Andrew – I couldn’t agree more – what this series needs is a smaller film, not a bigger film. More of a slow boil, because they’re at serious risk of isolating even their most hardcore fans by creating films that are so bombastic, they’re so confusing and don’t make any sense whatsoever.
Micah: But bigger in what sense? That’s the question.
Andrew: That is the question.
Micah: Is it just bigger in terms of geographic location; we’re going from the UK to Brazil to France to New York? Or bigger in terms of action and storylines? And maybe Dan just had to be very, very careful with the words that he used, given that they haven’t even started filming yet. He hasn’t even read the script.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: He hasn’t seen the script, so I wonder how he could say that it’s bigger. But like you said, Andrew, that’s what they told the actors. “Hey, it’s going to be bigger.”
Andrew: Apparently.
Eric: So if that is what they said, then that’s a question as far as Warner Bros. But I mean, delaying production affects everybody’s schedule. These actors are fairly busy; surely they have other projects they’re working on. It’s very interesting to get any sort of notice from Warner Bros. that seems to justify it in such an unwanted way. [laughs]
Andrew: Well, I think it’s PR spin. I think this is the line that they want the actors to say when they are asked about this in interviews for other projects, because like you say, they are out there doing other things right now, and naturally this is going to come up. But realistically… I was tweeting about this, and some people were pushing back, being like, “Well, what does bigger actually mean? Is this actually enough time to adjust the script?” I have no information to back this up, but I think they are just working on improving the script, not that they need more prep time because it’s bigger. And to Micah’s point about, well, if we’re also going to Brazil, that means we have to build a whole new world, and that’s going to take… I don’t mean with special effects; I mean in the script, you have to build a whole new world, and that’s going to take some time to introduce us to the various things that we’ve never seen before concerning the wizarding community in Brazil. So I just hope that they’re trimming everything down, maybe cutting out a couple characters. When I watch the digital release of Crimes of Grindelwald, I’m going to be making a list of things that I think were wholly unnecessary, that I think that they can just forget about for Movie 3.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: Right, and we talked a lot about the wizarding school in Brazil, and the fact that one of the subjects that it’s well known for is alchemy. So I think that the story, obviously, is going to continue around that, given that they introduced Flamel in the last film and the Sorcerer’s Stone; we saw that. But to your point, world-building is challenging, and I think we’ve already been thrown in so many different directions with the way that Crimes of Grindelwald was written that for it to get bigger going into Movie 3, that’s a little bit scary.
Andrew: Well, we’ll see, and maybe watching it digitally will change our opinions. I know watching the movie in a theater a second time I felt better about it…
Micah: Yeah, I did too.
Andrew: … so when I’m at home cuddling with my dog, got my feet kicked up, maybe I’ll feel even better about the movie.
Laura: Yeah. And then you can pause it at those moments where you’re like, “What the heck?”
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: And just really think about it for a minute. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah. I have my script book; I still have it right here. I can follow along. So exciting.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Want to give a shout-out to our latest patrons. Colin Creevey! Believe it or not, Colin Creevey signed up.
Eric: Oh!
Andrew: Hannah Hobson, Cody Hickman, Inga Palmquist, Molly M., Kathie Galin, Denise, Katie, Mark, Katherine, Corey, Lisa, Janeira, Nick, Andrea, Victoria, Sarah, Jasmine, Kimira, Rosalie, Katie. Thank you to everybody who has recently become a patron over at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. They’re getting benefits like bonus MuggleCast, ad-free MuggleCast, access to our recording studio; we are recording live on the Internet on this Saturday morning. We also have an exclusive Facebook group. You’ll get a physical gift every year. There’s lots of benefits over at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. And I also want to give a shout-out to people who’ve recently reviewed us on iTunes. Kim, who said, “There’s one major problem with the show: We aren’t Muggles, you guys!”
Eric: We are! [laughs]
Andrew: No.
Laura: Yeah, wink-wink.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: What if Laura this whole time has actually been a wizard? That’d be so crazy.
Eric: Oh, man.
Andrew: The Bossman also reviewed us, and said we need to cool it with our political opinions, because Harry Potter is for conservatives too.
Eric: Um…
Andrew: Okay.
Laura: Hang on a second.
Eric: Yeah, who wants to take this? Hold my beer.
Micah: All three of us.
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: I have no problem with that feedback.
Laura: No, me neither, but I want to bring up the point that at least during my very short tenure, having returned to the show, most of the political commentary and allegories that have come up have been in relation to Donald Trump. Donald Trump is not a conservative.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: He’s not. So nobody here is complaining about people who are genuine conservatives. This guy is not one; he’s an aspiring autocrat, so that is why he continues to come up again and again.
Eric: That’s such a Democrat opinion. That’s such a liberal opinion, Laura, of Donald Trump, honestly.
Andrew: Well, I think some Republicans would say he’s…
Laura: Yeah, they’re starting to fold on him too.
Eric: I mean, no, I’m just saying, this whole “Harry Potter is for conservatives too…” I would like to think there are conservatives out there who are quite afraid of this dystopian totalitarian regime he’s building as well. It’s not a… bipartisan effort should be to get this guy out, because the points we brought up last week are happening, whether you like it or not. There’s no political spin. The facts are the facts; these are things that are happening.
Andrew: Yeah, we’re like CNN. We’re real news.
Laura: [laughs] Real Harry Potter news.
Andrew: And I just want to also give a shout-out to BucksFan03, Alex and Ra, JCoughlin, and ThisIsMeg. I just want to say thank you for reviewing us on iTunes, because it helps us get noticed. So if you could take a moment to review us on iTunes if you haven’t already, we would really appreciate that, and we promise this podcast is for everybody.
Micah: Yeah, it is, and I’m not surprised by the feedback, but I would agree with what Laura said in terms of our discussion; we were having pretty in-depth discussion last week about the Ministry and about government, and I think that if you want to cast all political beliefs aside, it’s only natural to tie this discussion to current politicians, right? I mean, when Jo wrote the “The Other Minister” chapter, she definitely had certain people in mind. She definitely had the person that the other – the Muggle – Prime Minister was supposed to speak to on the phone be a president that was in power at the time, and I think there are comparisons to be made between the Prime Minister and the Muggle Prime Minister. I should say the Prime Minister at the time, and the Muggle Prime Minister. So everybody’s entitled to their opinion and everybody’s entitled to their belief, and we certainly don’t want to deter anyone from listening to the show, but I feel like given these chapters and how integral the Ministry is in the daily affairs of the main characters, it’s natural that you’re going to get comparisons to present day government to other governments that existed previously – we’ve talked a lot about World War II – so I just think that we’ll be a little bit more mindful, but know that I think the comparisons are warranted.
Andrew: Yeah, I wasn’t reading that review to have us lecture anybody or anything. I wasn’t lecturing you guys.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: Andrew is like, “Shut up.” No, I mean, so one thing that I will bring up, too, is that sort of a really big theme in the Potter books is people who are in positions of authority and abuse that power. [clears throat] Excuse me, I can’t get this thing out of my throat.
Eric: Expulso!
Laura: I’m a witch, right? I should be able to do that.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: But I mean, you look at situations like all the drama that’s going on in the Virginia governor’s mansion right now. There are clearly people, no matter the affiliation, that can end up in positions of power who should not be there. So this isn’t a case of being partisan; it’s just a case of identifying a particular individual who is reflective of certain themes that we see in the Potter books and drawing those connections.
Andrew: Yeah. I will say, generally, one reason I enjoy doing Chapter by Chapter these days is because we can look at these chapters and apply what is going on in them to our own lives, whether it’s politically or personally. It’s like, I enjoy reading into song lyrics, because you can apply those lyrics often to your own life. It’s the same thing that’s happening with Chapter by Chapter. All right, and we are about to get to Chapter by Chapter and some voicemails, but first, our first sponsor this week is Care/Of.
[Ad break]
Andrew: I was just talking with the guys about our respective pill packs, because we’re all taking them right now, aren’t we?
Eric: Yep.
Micah: Fish burps.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: I’ve already noticed a lot more of a presence of mind. I feel more awake. More aware, rather.
Andrew: Oh, good. Yeah, you were probably missing some nutrients, and Care/Of noticed in the quiz. [laughs]
Eric: Oh, I definitely was. Definitely was.
Listener Feerback
Andrew: All right, so let’s listen to some voicemails before we get to Chapter by Chapter. First we have a correction.
[Voicemail plays]
“Hey, MuggleCast, this is Rebecca. I’ve been listening to your show since the very beginning. Love you guys so much, but in your recent Chapter by Chapter, ‘A Very Frosty Christmas,’ I think it was mentioned that Bill got mauled by Greyback in Order of the Phoenix. That’s actually incorrect; he got mauled by Greyback at the end of this book, Half-Blood Prince, so he doesn’t even have any of those wolfish tendencies until the end of this book. And also, the altercation between Mrs. Weasley and Fleur doesn’t happen until the end of this book, so they don’t have their moment yet, and that’s why they still aren’t on speaking terms. And also, Bill and Fleur just got engaged at the very beginning of this book, so they haven’t been spending that much time together with the Weasleys, so there’s also that. But other than that, thank you guys so much. You do a great job. I love listening to you. Bye.”
[Voicemail ends]
Laura: Yep.
Andrew: [sighs] If I had been here, that wouldn’t have happened.
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: That was me, by the way. Sorry, guys.
Andrew: It’s okay, Laura. You’re new here.
Micah: No, we went along with it, though, so we’re just as culpable.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: You’ve brought shame upon us all, Laura.
Laura: I know.
Andrew: I’ll be honest; I mean, there’s a lot of information that we have to remember, of course, and quite frequently during our discussions, I’m sitting here googling to make sure that we’re about to say something that’s correct.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: It is hard, though, because you spend so much time with the books initially, but then if you don’t reread them regularly, what ends up happening is you tend to rely a lot on the movies…
Andrew: Yes.
Micah: … because you see them a lot more. They’re on television; maybe you watch them in your free time, so…
Andrew: Maybe you have more of a visual memory too. I know that’s the case with me.
Micah: That’s a great point.
Andrew: But speaking of just forgetting, when I was reading last week’s chapter in preparation for today, I had forgotten how vicious Greyback is, because in the movie he doesn’t… he’s seriously reduced.
Laura: Yeah, and he’s almost kind of comical in some ways. I recently rewatched Deathly Hallows – Part 1, and there was the part where the Snatchers caught the trio, and Harry’s face was all swollen and puffy, and one of the Snatchers was like, “What happened to you, ugly?” And then Greyback kind of looks at him weird, and then he looks at Greyback and he’s like, “Not you.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Laura: And I’m like, “No, he’s actually way more terrifying than that.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: All right, here is our next voicemail.
[Voicemail plays]
“Hey, MuggleCast. This is Katie from Texas. I was just listening to your last episode where you were talking about Harry and Lupin’s conversation at Christmas, and I thought it was really unfair for Lupin to say that Harry had inherited Sirius and James’s prejudices, because before Harry ever met Lupin, before he knew anything about their father’s rivalry, he already did not like Snape because of the way Snape treated him and his friends. And what kid wouldn’t feel the way Harry feels about Snape, after the way Snape treated him, and after the way Snape treats Neville? And so I think if anything, Harry has inherited Snape’s old grudges. And I just thought that was a really unfair thing for Lupin to say, and that it shows that he doesn’t really understand just how unfair Snape is to the kids, and I’m just curious to see what you guys think about that. Thanks for the show; I really enjoy listening to it every week. Keep up the good work, guys.”
[Voicemail ends]
Andrew: Yeah, I totally agree with that. It almost seems like a mistake from J.K. Rowling. Why would Lupin think that Harry is inheriting Sirius and James’s issues?
Laura: I mean, it could just be Lupin trying to separate these two things, right? Just because Snape is a mean teacher does not mean that he’s working for Voldemort, so it could be he’s trying to drive that home, and he’s trying to make Harry see, “Hey, just because this guy is an ass, doesn’t mean that he’s working for Lord Voldemort.”
Eric: Even though he is.
Laura: [laughs] Kinda.
Micah: Yeah, it’s almost… do you take it at the literal sense of the word “inherited”? But I think that it’s a great point; Harry definitely develops his own feelings towards Snape way before Lupin ever is in the picture and learns about his father, learns about Sirius, and I think it says more about Snape than it really does about Harry. They’ve never seen eye-to-eye from day one, really, and I don’t think that Snape… if Lupin was having that same conversation with Neville, with Seamus, with any of the other Gryffindors or Hufflepuffs or Slytherins… or Ravenclaws, I should say; I mean, seems like he’s a fan favorite amongst the Slytherins. But I don’t think he has a great reputation. I think any student has really that negative perception of Snape and doesn’t really like him at all.
Eric: Yeah, Snape definitely earns his reputation, or Harry’s dislike of him. But I think what Lupin is trying to get at, too, is ever since Harry did find out that Snape was awful to his parents, too, he’s gotten more of a reason to hate Snape or suspect of wrongdoing. I think maybe Lupin is having a failed attempt to reduce the unnecessary… just to make sure that Harry has a good reason for what he’s doing, because James needed none.
Micah: And there are moments when Harry doesn’t know a whole hell of a lot about his father, and again, going to the movies here, but there’s a line where Snape says to Harry, “Your father was a swine.” And this is a 15/16-year-old kid who doesn’t still really know that much about his parents. I mean, he’s heard about them from other people, but to hear that at that age from somebody who’s supposed to be your professor, who’s supposed to be teaching you and instilling values in you and helping you grow as an individual? That’s horrible.
Andrew: Right. All right, another voicemail in regards to last week.
[Voicemail plays]
“Hi, MuggleCast. This is Jacob from Virginia. I wanted to talk briefly about the Mrs. Weasley/Fleur relationship, because I think J.K. Rowling does hit on what Laura was bringing up, that this mother-in-law tension story is pretty tried and true. I grew up with a sort of Mrs. Weasley figure in my neighborhood, and I think the tension in Mrs. Weasley and Fleur’s relationship comes from a perceived different set of values. On Mrs. Weasley’s part, she thinks that Fleur maybe doesn’t like their disheveled home, or there’s a different set of reasons that she likes Bill, as is portrayed in actually the end of Half-Blood Prince, when she thinks that Fleur won’t like Bill anymore because he’s not handsome or what have you. So it’s a total lack of understanding of Fleur’s motivation based on, I don’t know, perceived prejudice of the French, of blonde girls… I don’t know. Anyway, so I think that’s what plays out. Anyway, really enjoy the show. Thanks, bye.”
[Voicemail ends]
Andrew: I like that.
Laura: Yeah. I mean, also, Fleur is part-Veela, so I’m sure there’s some prejudice going on there.
Eric: Yeah, we’ve definitely talked, even last week, about how the Weasleys’ compass or the Weasley family’s… how they manage certain ideas about other races could be fraught, could be a problem. So I found that to be a very illuminating discussion last week.
Andrew: And one more voicemail regarding Fantastic Beasts.
[Voicemail plays]
“Hey, MuggleCast. It’s Claire. I just called; I got cut off, but I was talking about Draco. You were talking about him recently and his Unbreakable Vow. Do you think potentially, with Yusuf Kama and different things coming up, that we might see what happens when an Unbreakable Vow is broken? We’re talking about Draco and Snape and different things like that. We haven’t really seen the effects of what happens when an Unbreakable Vow is broken. What happens? What are the consequences? Is it death? Or what happens? Or what does that death look like? We haven’t seen that yet, so that was just my food for thought. Do you think we might see that in a film at some point? And if that’s going to come up within these next five movies? We didn’t see them in the first seven, but we’ve heard about them so much, and we haven’t really gotten a solid thing of what happens when it’s broken; we’ve just seen them fulfilled. Let me know what your thoughts are. I will keep listening. Bye.”
[Voicemail ends]
Andrew: I would love to see what happens when you violate an Unbreakable Vow, but I think J.K. Rowling might focus us on the blood pact that was made between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, because of course, that was very prominent in Crimes of Grindelwald, and Dumbledore might be trying to destroy it within the next three movies.
Eric: Yeah, and I’d love to see what would… I’d love to see how it would kill you if you broke an Unbreakable Vow, but we can’t use the Yusuf Kama Unbreakable Vow because it’s so damn vague.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Well, we could be learning more about it.
Eric: I mean, not really… for the whole “You have to avenge the people that your father would have hated,” or something, something, something, I’m just… well, we’ve questioned openly – and Micah especially, you can back me up – why this Unbreakable Vow is supposedly still in effect, too, so it just would be really unclear, and it would be a crappy way for Yusuf Kama to go out, of like, “Oops, I accidentally forgot to kill this person who is technically blood related, but nobody knows he’s blood related, and now that person has gone on to survive.” A weird thing would just randomly kill him in an important scene when he’s about to divulge super important info; like, “Oops, broke my Unbreakable Vow.” It just… I have no faith that they could use Yusuf’s Unbreakable Vow in a cool way to show him succumb.
Micah: That would be my question: Is the Unbreakable Vow still valid? Because supposedly, Corvus Jr. is dead. He died in the middle of the sea during the Titanic-like incident that occurred in Crimes of Grindelwald.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: So technically, Yusuf should be absolved of his responsibility to carry out that task. I would also ask, who did he make the Unbreakable Vow with? Did he make it with his father? That seems like the most likely person. But also, could you be absolved of an Unbreakable Vow? Let’s say that, for the sake of argument, Credence is actually Corvus. Could Credence allow Yusuf to somehow not have to carry out the act that he was tasked with? I think it would be cool, definitely, to the point of this voicemail, to just learn more about Unbreakable Vows.
Andrew: Yeah, exactly.
Micah: I guess, yes, in the name it says you can’t break it, but there has to be some way around it, kind of similar to the blood pact, Andrew, where Dumbledore thinks there might be a way that he can maybe dissolve the blood pact, or… so I think there’s more to be seen here and more to learn.
Andrew: Yeah, like what happens when you violate it? I want to see what happens. Do you just… it’s like a death drop? You just drop to the ground? You’re dead? Do you dissolve? Do you float up in the air and then explode? What happens? [laughs] “He violated it!” screams something like a Howler, and then you die. All right, couple emails, then we’ll get to Chapter by Chapter. Eric, do you want to read them?
Eric: Sure. This one comes from Sherry. She wrote in to say,
“Hey, everyone. I have some thoughts on Molly, Lupin, and the weirdness of the adults constantly talking about trusting Dumbledore. I agree completely that Molly is rude and unkind to Fleur in this chapter, but this is by no means the first time we’ve seen this behavior from her. In Order of the Phoenix, she was incredibly, disgustingly rude to Sirius, and in his own home. It always bothers me that nobody ever talks about this. I was glad to hear you talk about this aspect of her personality.
The garden gnome thing bothered me too. I admit to laughing over Dudley’s pigtail, the Ton-Tongue Toffee, and the amazing bouncing ferret. But the gnome bothered me, even my first read of this book. I think one reason I’ve cut Ron a lot of slack over his prejudices is that he learned them at home. And to be fair, so did Draco Malfoy, but Ron at least changed his mind quickly about werewolves, and didn’t have an issue with Hagrid being half-giant.
Harry was bullied by Snape before he knew how Sirius and James felt about him. I think Harry can form his own feelings about why Snape is such a jerk. I don’t agree that he was ‘working on the side of the light’ all those years. In one sense, sure he was, but he was doing it for Lily. We don’t know what his true thoughts were about Voldemort or Dumbledore or what either of them stood for. The good guys in the Potter series always scared me a little with their utter devotion to Dumbledore. And this should probably come up later in this book study, but doesn’t it bother anyone that Dumbledore and Snape knew Draco’s mission and just let him run free in a school full of children? Katie and Ron both could have died due to their negligence. It’s shocking to me. But if I had been a parent of a wizarding child and happened to hear what was going on, I’d pull my kid out of that crazy place so fast! Thanks again for all the great discussion, Sherry.”
Andrew: Yeah. I mean, I bring this up from time on the show: Hogwarts is a very dangerous place for children, and it’s really irresponsible of Dumbledore, and here he goes again. [laughs] I mean, there’s this kid on a murder mission running around the school completely free to do whatever he wants.
Eric: Yeah, and we’ll talk about it in this chapter too. But Dumbledore is totally aware; Dumbledore 100% knows and is letting this happen. And to the point of… we were just talking about what happens when you break an Unbreakable Vow; we didn’t find out in the books, because Dumbledore and Snape decided to go with it. They were like, “Oh, Draco’s got to kill me or it’s got to be you? Sure, we’ll work with it. I’m cursed anyway.” [laughs]
Andrew: Right, exactly.
Eric: So very interesting stuff, and we do appreciate all of our listeners who write in. Love reading emails.
Chapter by Chapter: Seven-Word Summary
Andrew: So let’s jump into Chapter by Chapter. This week, we’re discussing Chapter 17 of Half-Blood Prince, “A Sluggish Memory.” We’ll start, as always, with our Seven-Word Summary. [takes a deep breath] Umm…
Micah: That’s a hell of a word.
Andrew: I’m thinking out loud.
Micah: Oh.
Laura: [laughs] I’m so glad I don’t have to go first this week.
Andrew: Yeah, I signed myself up to go first. What was I thinking?
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Young…
Laura: … wizards…
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Eric: … can…
Micah: … make…
Andrew: … Horcruxes…
Laura: … from…
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Laura: This is so bad.
Eric: … murders.
Laura: Okay, not that bad.
Andrew: See, when I started… when I said “young,” I was hoping you guys were going to go for “Tom Riddle.” The flashbacks.
Eric: Yeah, but I also… this is not the chapter where we learn what Horcruxes are, so we just did the Seven-Word Summary from somewhere else in the books. [laughs]
Andrew: Well, but we get them, so… we get tastes of them.
Chapter by Chapter: Main Discussion
Andrew: All right, well, so I just wanted to bring up something that’s not very important right at the beginning. The Fat Lady has made the password to the Gryffindor common room “Abstinence.” What is she trying to say?
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Laura: I thought that it was in reference to her being super hungover from her partying.
Andrew: Abstinence from alcohol.
Micah: She was getting lit during Christmas.
[Laura laughs]
Eric: 500-year-old wine.
Andrew: But there’s so much romance in these books that I thought maybe she was trying to say, “Abstain from… sex, sexual relations.”
Eric: “Keep it in the pants”?
Laura: Yeah, I mean, it could definitely have some double meaning here.
Andrew: Does the Fat Lady need to lecture the kids on what to do in school? [laughs] I thought it was a funny sort of way of telling the kids what to do.
Micah: Right, and since when does she get to make up…? Has she always made up the password, or does the prefect or the Head of House? How does that work?
Andrew: [laughs] McGonagall.
Eric: Yeah, it’s weird because Cadogan makes up his own passwords, but it never struck me as being a thing that the portraits did. Clearly he broke the rules, or he had his own ideas about how to do things, but maybe it was the Fat Lady all along, in which case she has a gift for rhetoric, or literary references.
Andrew: So anyway.
Eric and Micah: Anyway.
Eric: Big question I had going into this chapter: Hermione comes back from break, they’re at Hogwarts, and her arrival… she explicitly states, “Hi, Harry! Hi, Ginny! How was your holidays?” And Ron is standing right there. Is this over the top?
Andrew: Yeah, I just really need all this awkwardness to end, because I can’t take it anymore. It just hurts my soul.
[Micah laughs]
Laura: I mean, I don’t think it’s inappropriate for 16-year-olds. I think this is pretty standard behavior for people who are upset with each other and who haven’t made up yet.
Micah: But Ron is trying, though, I think. He gets smothered right at the start by Lavender, but he tries to catch up with Harry and Hermione at one point in the beginning of the chapter, and yet he still gets the cold shoulder. And Harry even mentions to Hermione that he had hoped that some time off, being home for the holidays, maybe would have helped to mend this broken relationship, this broken friendship that’s going on.
Andrew: You would think it would.
Eric: Yeah, but Hermione has also drawn her line and said, “Ron needs to apologize. I’m not going to forgive him for what he’s done; he needs to man up and come and actually apologize for it.” And Ron just doesn’t have the emotional intelligence to figure out how to approach Hermione or to even really comprehend what he has done wrong, I think, at this point.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: He knows, at least at this point, that he doesn’t want to be with Lavender, but he’s not putting two and two together of, “I need to actively break up, to actively choose to repair my relationship with Hermione.” He’s just expecting to be let off the hook because he has been let off the hook every single other time.
Micah: Right.
Andrew: I do feel like the time away from one another outside of the school should have naturally mended a couple of these bridges, and Ron should have went back to Hogwarts with a clear head, but he didn’t because he’s a stubborn git.
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Micah: Well, so is Hermione when it comes to Draco Malfoy. And Harry, much like he was able to tell Mr. Weasley and to tell Lupin over the holidays, he’s finally able to fill Hermione in on what happened that night of the Slug Club Christmas party when he overheard Snape and Draco, and Hermione, of course, reacts the way that we would have expected her to react, but she even goes a little bit further than that, and Harry calls her out on it. Basically, “Is there nothing that I say to you that’s going to convince you that something is going on here?” And why are his friends so reluctant now? It’s like putting the evidence literally right in front of them, and yet nothing.
Andrew: She’s reluctant, but she also admits – and Harry has to kind of pry it out of her – but she does admit that he’s right.
Laura: Yeah, I agree. I also think that Hermione is maybe falling into the same trap that Lupin was falling into in the last chapter, of thinking that Harry just sort of has a natural bias against Snape and Draco.
Eric: Yeah, and on one hand, she admits, “This is the most incriminating bit of evidence so far,” but she doesn’t go further. She doesn’t actually say, “Well, this is something we need to devote considerable resources on.” There’s just something else going on. And I don’t know from a writing standpoint if Jo intended this to be a little bit more of a weird sticking point for Harry, because I think at this point the evidence is too heavy on Draco being up to something and Snape being up to something; the fact that we have to wait all year to figure out what it was is grueling. So I think maybe there should have been a little bit more nuance to it, or more cause for these friends of Harry’s not to believe him, than just either old prejudices – what Lupin said – or something big should happen where Harry should be proven wrong about Draco in a big way, and then the rest of the book is like, “No, no, I’ve got to own my prejudice; Lupin was right,” and then only to figure out at the end that he wasn’t. So I think there maybe should have been another level of this, because it is just sad to see that nobody’s believing Harry when he’s completely in the right.
Andrew: Yeah, especially because Harry saw something going on with his own two eyes. It’s not like he heard something from somebody who heard something from somebody. This was directly… he saw the situation directly, and that should be taken very seriously.
Eric: I will say, in this chapter, at least, maybe it’s meant to be put to rest, because when Harry brings it to Dumbledore – and we’ll talk about this in a moment – and Dumbledore doesn’t do anything about it, we’re just supposed to take it as a mystery that won’t get resolved anytime soon, right? I think it’s just a way that we’re just supposed to live with this mystery, this subplot.
Micah: Exactly. And I have a huge issue with the way that Dumbledore behaves, and we can talk about that. But before we get there… because it does tie directly into your Quizzitch question, Eric, from last week…
Eric: Ah.
Micah: … we learn that the trio are finally going to be able to take Apparition lessons. Harry, though, is of course very experienced in this field already, so much so that he becomes a celebrity, and everybody… this was the dumbest thing I read in this chapter.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Whoa.
Micah: He’s the celebrity Apparater; everybody wants to talk to him. “What is it like? Apparate this, Apparate that.” Isn’t he famous and doesn’t he already draw enough attention to himself? He needs to be the… I don’t know. I’ll get your thoughts.
Andrew: Well, but this is something they will be able to do, too, soon. They’re not one day going to fight Voldemort. Well, they don’t know it yet.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: But this is something… this is a skill that they look forward to learning themselves, and then they find out that Harry has already done it; they want to know what it’s like.
Micah: But of course Harry’s already done… Harry’s already done half this stuff that…
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: He’s already made a… go ahead. I’m sorry.
Andrew: I was actually surprised that we learn that the lessons are going to be by a Ministry of Magic instructor, and there’s no resistance from Harry on that, despite just getting into a fight with Scrimgeour. He doesn’t have any issue with being taught by the Ministry. Isn’t that like… wouldn’t that annoy him in this moment?
Eric: It’s certainly interesting. I love that you pointed this out.
Andrew: And why do they need to be taught by the Ministry? Because this is really serious stuff?
Eric: What are they, 16? I mean, it’s like driving, right? It’s a state-sponsored driving test, essentially, is the way I look at it. Driving is dangerous; you risk everyone’s life when you go out in your car, and it’s in everybody’s best interest that you learn to do it right, because a lot of lives are at stake. So I think it needs to be the Ministry, in the sense of the Ministry is the leading, agreed-upon body to teach this kind of a lesson to you. So because the Ministry ultimately probably licenses Apparition, or it’s in their domain to make sure that you’re doing it correctly.
Micah: You could also draw comparisons from this back to the beginning of the chapter, Andrew, when you were talking about abstinence and even needing to be a certain age to do certain things. They’re being… just a thought.
Andrew: Yeah. I don’t know; there are a lot of dangerous things that happen at Hogwarts that are taught there.
Micah: True.
Andrew: So I still don’t really understand why the Ministry has to do this. But anyway.
Eric: Yeah, I think it’s a fair question.
Micah: Let’s get to Dumbledore’s office. Andrew, I see here… so when Harry gets there, he tells him about the encounter that he had with the Minister over the holidays, and one of the most famous lines in the Potter series: He says that he’s “Dumbledore’s man through and through.”
Andrew: Yeah, and what happens after that is really important. So Fawkes gives out this little singing cry, and then after that, Dumbledore has tears in his eyes. So two things on this: First of all, I wonder if this was one of Dumbledore’s last – if not the final – joyous moment in his life, the final moment where he’s brought to tears, because Fawkes’s cry was a signal of Harry’s true loyalty to Dumbledore. This happened, and we’ll get to this later in connecting the threads in Chamber of Secrets as well, where Fawkes marks loyalty. It was just really sad to me reading this and thinking that, “Wow, this may have been one of Dumbledore’s final moments of pride, of joy, of happiness, of feeling so closely connected to somebody.” Do you guys agree?
Laura: Yeah, and I think in retrospect, it makes it even more bittersweet.
Eric: Definitely, yeah.
Andrew: Right, reading it for the first time, you don’t know what’s about to happen.
Eric: But for me, this new stuff from Crimes of Grindelwald about the Dumbledore legend, and how a phoenix will come to you, just really kind of revives for me this interest in phoenixes as a creature, as a beast…
Andrew: Yes.
Eric: … and how Fawkes came to Harry in Chamber of Secrets – I know, Laura, you’re eager to connect those threads – but it is just so interesting that the loyalty to Dumbledore that he’s showing now that’s causing Fawkes to cry… also, Dumbledore in Book 2 was like, “Nothing but immense loyalty could have called Fawkes to you.” So Fawkes is bonding with Harry now over their love of Dumbledore or something like that, their show of faith for this man, this deeply flawed man. Very curious. I just can’t wait for future Fantastic Beasts films to talk about what draws phoenixes to Dumbledores and why that family is so special.
Micah: Definitely. And I think it is curious that Chapter 17 of Chamber of Secrets and Chapter 17 of Half-Blood Prince both have this loyalty connection with Fawkes, and with Dumbledore.
Andrew: Yeah. And by the way, I’m looking forward to seeing Crimes of Grindelwald again for the very end, when the phoenix is reborn. Because does the phoenix give out a little cry there? I feel like he did, he or she did.
Eric: It’s the cry of being set on fire by Grindelwald.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: Ouch!
Andrew: Well, or is it a loyalty cry? Is that supposed to be telling us something?
Eric: Yeah, maybe.
Andrew: Anyway.
Micah: True, but he also just kind of took that baby phoenix and threw it up into the air and it magically became a full-grown phoenix. I don’t think that’s how it works; from what I remember in Dumbledore’s office, we see Fawkes kind of grow through different times where Harry is in the office, so… all right, well, we have that really tender moment between Harry and Dumbledore, and then we also have the conversation about Snape and Draco, and I wanted to ask: Were we surprised by Dumbledore’s reaction? And is it fair for him to tell Harry just to kind of cast his thoughts aside? This is something… it’s been his mission, really, not just from the beginning of Half-Blood Prince, but it’s really been his mission since he’s gotten at Hogwarts to nail Draco on something, and I don’t think it’s right – especially after what Harry has just said to him – the fact that Dumbledore is withholding so much information from Harry, and that he was defending him. Harry was defending him to Scrimgeour in the last chapter. I just feel like it’s just kind of, “Eh, trust Dumbledore. Everything will work out.”
Laura: Yeah. And I think that’s all by design, right? Because Dumbledore can’t very well tell Harry, “Okay, yeah. Harry, you’re totally right. Yeah, Draco is trying to kill me, but I’m going to let Snape kill me, and this is all for sort of the larger story arc of setting you up to die…”
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: “… so that Voldemort will die, but then you’ll come back.” I think Dumbledore is trying not to overload Harry. I think he’s trying to keep him focused on one particular objective, because unfortunately, Harry… he can be pretty easily sidetracked.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: It’s just so manipulative that Dumbledore… this is the first chapter where Dumbledore gives Harry homework, and the homework is to track down Slughorn and extract a memory that would normally be given under duress. And this is something that Dumbledore… Harry comes to Dumbledore with the full picture of everything that’s literally going on between Snape, Draco, and the plot, and Dumbledore is just like, “Yeah, push it out of your mind,” because he knows that if Harry were distracted, he wouldn’t be able to get this memory from Slughorn. If he just came clean to Harry, Harry wouldn’t get him what he wants in that moment, and Harry is… this has potentially been built towards the entire year of school so far that Dumbledore has Slughorn in this position where he can sick Harry on him and get Harry to give him… basically solve the puzzle piece.
Micah: But what would have been the harm in Dumbledore just saying, “Okay, Harry, I’ll speak with Professor Snape,” or “I’ll investigate the situation”? That’s all he would have had to have said, in my mind, maybe just to placate Harry a little bit, but he just tells Harry to completely forget about it. And honestly, Harry has just been… I wouldn’t say wrong place, wrong time, but he’s just happened to be in these places where Draco has been and thinks that he’s up to something; he’s absolutely right. And I just think Dumbledore could have done a better job here, instead of just saying, “Okay, well, you know what, Harry? Forget about this. Let’s dive into some memories, and I’m going to give you some homework,” which is essentially an impossible task, I think, at the outset, something that Dumbledore could have easily just done himself.
Andrew: He should have placated him, but I don’t agree with giving Harry more information than that, because think about what would have happened if Harry knew that the plan was for Dumbledore to die and for him to die. [laughs] I mean, you know how Harry reacts to things; he would have been like, “There has to be another way. We have to do this differently. I can’t lose you, Dumbledore. We can’t lose you.”
Eric: Maybe he would have found another way. I don’t know, I like to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s just the problem is Dumbledore was kind of a dick about it. I’d love to quote this comment. Harry asked him, “Professor, did you understand – ?” And he says, “Yes, Harry, blessed as I am with extraordinary brainpower, I understood everything you told me. I think you might even consider the possibility that I understood more than you did.” Like, what? [laughs]
Laura: I think that’s Dumbledore’s way of telling Harry, “Hey, yeah, I know what’s going on in my school. Stop pestering me about this.”
Andrew: Right, yeah, exactly.
Eric: So before we get into the first memory here, we actually get some interesting backstory about the progression of Voldemort, because they’re reviewing what they’ve learned so far. The very last memory we had was Dumbledore and Riddle in the orphanage, and Dumbledore actually pretty candidly talks about Tom Riddle growing up at Hogwarts, and how the first couple of years, he developed a group of friends and also charmed, Dumbledore says, most of his peers, so most of Dumbledore’s colleagues, the other teachers at school, genuinely liked Tom Riddle. And apart from being a perfect setup to the whole Slughorn-revealing-info-he-shouldn’t memory that we’re going to see later, it also gives us an important piece of the puzzle as far as to understand Tom Riddle, you’ve got to know that he was attractive and persuasive and knew where to toe the line, and I think that’s a crucial interpretation that to this day in my mind, as far as how I view Voldemort as a villain, this is the most compelling part to me. When he was 11, sure, he messed up, showed Dumbledore more than he wanted to, but then immediately thereafter – and Dumbledore talks about this with Harry – really was reserved and achieved everything he achieved by being a lot more cautious.
Andrew: But we’ll talk about this more in bonus MuggleCast.
Micah: Yes.
Eric: Well, yeah, specifically in bonus MuggleCast, I’d like to talk about Tom’s Death Eater friends, or “friends” in air quotes, and what that sort of situation might have been like to actually be in school with Tom Riddle. But Dumbledore tells Harry not a lot of people are willing to talk about young Tom Riddle. I don’t know if it’s due to guilt or what.
Micah: Right. So we dive into a memory that we do not get in the films at all; it is of Tom Riddle really meeting his family for the first time, and he meets his uncle, Morfin, and he frames him for the murder of his father and his grandparents. They do a little Parseltongue communication, but I wonder… it’s almost impossible to think that Tom went to the Gaunt home that evening with the intent of looking to kill his father. It’s almost like he gets enlightened by Morfin as to the fact that it was actually his mom who was a witch, and his father is just this Muggle that clearly Morfin has no like for. But I’m impressed by how advanced Tom is at this young age, because not only does he frame his uncle for these murders, but he alters his memory so that he actually believes that it was him who did it.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s pretty surprising.
Eric: Dumbledore uses the phrase “implants a memory.” That’s what he says; he “implants a memory.” So Tom Riddle gave Morfin his memory of killing the Riddles somehow.
Andrew: It’s pretty surprising and disturbing, because you wonder if Tom has done this again, and how many times he’s done it, because this wields a lot of power.
Micah: Absolutely. It’s highly disturbing. And I would also say, though, that Dumbledore… he’s able to get into Azkaban to see Morfin to extract this memory from him, yet later on in this chapter, it’s clear that he’s not able to get the right memory from Slughorn, so I almost wonder how that’s possible, given just how powerful Dumbledore is, and we can talk a little bit more about that later. There’s also a bit of fan service in this part of the chapter, and there’s a bit later on as well – or at least I like to think of it as fan service – because Tom is able to use magic without being detected by the Ministry, and Harry calls this out, and I almost think that’s a question that any listener of this show would ask.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: “Well, hold on a second. Harry gets mail almost right away after blowing up Aunt Marge; how can Tom do all of this without being detected?” And Eric, I think you bring up a really great point; he not only does it in the home of the Gaunts, but he uses magic at the Riddle home, and that should have been detected way easier, and should have had Ministry officials deployed almost right away, because it’s the Killing Curse.
Eric: Yeah, I’m really surprised that this question gets brought up. I think Harry asks, “Why wasn’t it detected?” or whatever, and the rule of thumb is that they couldn’t tell whether Morfin or Tom Riddle did it in Morfin’s home. But then again, I’m thinking, “What about the Riddle house?” Or something. I’m just really unclear as far as… the Trace should work one of those places and not the other, so it’s pretty confusing to me.
Andrew: It’s interesting you call it fan service, Micah. I think you’re just forgetting how glorious the books were. We just don’t have time in movies to dive into this type of information, whereas in the books, there’s plenty of room for J.K. Rowling to insert it.
Micah: Yeah, that’s fair.
Eric: Maybe.
Andrew: I mean, we get frustrated by some things in Fantastic Beasts, and if this was a book instead, we almost certainly would get the answer sooner instead of later. [laughs] I.e. McGonagall and other things that we’re very confused by.
Micah: Sure.
Andrew: But that’s besides the point.
Laura: Yeah, I do think this is somewhat of a plot hole, though.
Andrew: Really?
Laura: Yeah, I mean, as Eric and Micah brought up, this doesn’t make sense. On the outside, when you’re reading the book, you’re like, “Oh, okay, there’s the why,” but then you think about it for two seconds, and you’re like, “Wait, it still doesn’t make sense, because it would have detected him. He went to a Muggle home and used a Killing Curse. How is that not setting off alarms at the Ministry?”
Micah: Right.
Eric: Everybody under 17 has the Trace on them, and so no matter where they go, if they cast magic outside of Hogwarts or a “I’m allowed” place, the Trace goes off, and the Trace wouldn’t go off if it were Morfin that cast the spell. It just wouldn’t, because Morfin is not underage, so very specifically, it was an underage wizard who cast…
Micah: It’s his wand. I mean, that’s the one thing maybe you could argue, is that Tom uses his wand, and then you can make the argument, “Okay, well, maybe he killed them after the Trace had already dissolved,” or whatever it does, but then you go back into the memory of Slughorn, and he’s wearing the ring, so clearly he did it at some point when he was at Hogwarts.
Laura: But then I guess the question is, “Is the Trace actually on the wizard, or is it on their wand?”
Eric: But Harry blows up Aunt Marge without his wand.
Laura: Exactly.
Eric: Yeah, and Dobby, what, causes the cake to fall? It’s a Hover Charm or whatever? Within the…
Laura: Yeah, and he got blamed for it.
Eric: But then it’s within the dwelling, so…
Andrew: Right, they’re tracking… yeah. They don’t know who individually.
Eric: Yeah, so it’s just…
Andrew: So if they don’t know who individually is conducting magic, no matter your age, then I struggle to think that the Trace is down to the person.
Micah: Right.
Andrew: I don’t know. That is a weird question.
Micah: Get Jo back on Twitter.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Where’s she at?
Eric: We’re going to bombard her with these questions.
Micah: But it is important just to note that in this memory, both the ring and the locket are mentioned. Obviously, Tom ends up taking the ring, but there is a call-out to his mom and the locket. So I think there’s a couple questions here we’ll probably save also for that bonus MuggleCast discussion, one about – which I think, Eric, you brought up a little bit earlier – the charming personality of Tom and how it’s been able to work on some of Dumbledore’s colleagues. We’ll obviously talk about Slughorn, but I’m interested to know who else it worked on. And then Dumbledore clearly has some suspicions of Tom early on at Hogwarts, not just from his time visiting him at the orphanage, and I kind of blame him here, because I think he could have acted with a little bit more intent and been a little bit more… done a little bit more oversight on him.
Eric: The only thing I think can clear this up is… the Chamber of Secrets was opened in, I think, 1941/1942. We’re going to be able to see this era of Dumbledore not prosecuting Tom Riddle, or not going… deciding not to blame Tom Riddle, and somehow allowing Hagrid to take the blame. I think, based on what Dumbledore already knows about Tom Riddle and/or suspects, the excuse he gives Harry in this chapter of “I was just going to let him live his life; I gave him the benefit of the doubt” doesn’t hold any water when a student has been murdered. So I think that ultimately, we’re going to have to see a Jude Law Dumbledore, because if Crimes of Grindelwald… if the Fantastic Beasts series ends in 1945, all of this will have happened at Hogwarts, and hopefully we get more of a substantial reason as to how or why Tom Riddle was able to operate the way that he was through Hogwarts, and it’s probably Dumbledore’s fault.
Laura: Yeah, it is interesting, because on a former episode, we had posited that the reason Dumbledore made this special house visit to the orphanage was because he saw the potential for Tom Riddle to be somebody who could be easily radicalized à la Grindelwald.
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Laura: And then for him to make that visit and see what he sees, and then just sort of give Tom a blank slate when he arrives at Hogwarts, does raise some questions.
Micah: For sure.
Eric: Yeah, definitely.
Micah: Before we jump into the sluggish memory, there was one other thing I wanted to bring up: Tom’s good looks are mentioned a number of times in this chapter, and is it a coincidence that it’s mentioned many times that both he and Harry are said to look like their fathers?
Andrew: Could be a little parallel that J.K. Rowling is getting at.
Eric and Laura: Yeah.
Laura: She likes to draw tons of parallels between Harry and Tom Riddle.
Micah: Yeah, because even Morfin points out the fact that he looks like that Muggle that lives up the hill or wherever.
Eric: Oh, yeah, yeah. Good point.
Andrew: Tom Riddle doesn’t age well, though, does he? I mean, he loses a nose by the end of his life.
Micah: True.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: So the parallel kind of falls apart.
Eric: Do any of us look like our fathers, by the way, do we think? Do we get told that?
Andrew: Oh, God, yes. Unfortunately. Sometimes I’m staring at myself in the mirror for a long period of time, and my dad pops out of my face. I’m like, “Ooh, God!”
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Or when you see younger photos of your dad, does it look..?
Andrew: Right, right.
Micah: For me, yeah, totally.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. There’s a photo of me at a wedding a couple years ago, dancing with my mom, and I think I look a lot like her, actually, so I probably inherited more of my mother’s facial structure.
Andrew: Is your mom blonde? Because I understand you’re blonde right now.
Eric: [laughs] We used to… I think both of us have lighter hair, and then mine is currently artificial at the moment, or colored.
Andrew: [laughs] I know. I’m just kidding.
Eric: But yeah, anyway, I thought that was an interesting… let’s draw it back to ourselves every time we can.
Andrew: Yeah, right.
Eric: Laura, who do you look like?
Laura: It changes as I go through different phases of my life. So when I was younger, definitely more like my dad, but as I get older, I do see a lot more of my mom coming out, if that makes sense.
Eric: And does your mom have blue hair too?
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: No, hers is purple right now.
Eric: Oh, what? [laughs]
Andrew: Really?
Laura: Yeah. [laughs]
Andrew: Wow, you get the hair dyeing after your mom, I guess.
Micah: That is awesome.
Eric: There you go.
Micah: Love it.
Andrew: Anyway, memory number two: Dumbledore warns us that this is going to be a quick one.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: And what’s interesting about this memory, and what I’m excited to talk about, is we learn eventually that Slughorn tampered with the memory, so it kind of jumps around, and Slughorn tampered with it so that he would look better. [laughs] But there’s this quote that the tampered-with memory “proved difficult to empty into the Pensieve, as though they had congealed slightly; did memories go bad?”
Laura: Yeah, I thought this was really interesting. When a memory is modified, it congeals. I don’t know; I guess I was wondering, is this also the product of Slughorn’s shoddy work? Because we see in the memory, he did not do a very good job of modifying this.
[Eric laughs]
Laura: Which is also kind of surprising, because Dumbledore remarks that Slughorn is a very well-practiced wizard.
Eric: Was this memory supposed to fool anybody? Because it’s a very amateurish-seeming attempt.
Laura: Yeah. I think it seems like it was rushed, like Slughorn knew Dumbledore wanted it, and he was like, “Ah, shit. I gotta pump the brakes on this one.”
Andrew: [laughs] Yeah.
Laura: So it just seems like it was a desperate attempt to very quickly modify the events of the past, or at least as he remembered them.
Eric: You’ve got to imagine, if memories can be modified – and even the supposedly impartial Pensieve can be fooled by a modified memory – you’d at least get a visual of Slughorn saying the words that he spoke. Instead, it’s this fog that engulfs the room, and then Slughorn’s voiceover going, “You’ll go wrong someday!” But ideally there wouldn’t be any fog; you would just see the scene play out as it should have, as the person remembering wants it to have done. Yeah, so that’s why I think you’re right, Laura, in suggesting that it was rushed.
Andrew: I have so many questions about this. Laura was kind of just getting at this, but when exactly did Slughorn decide to alter this memory? And yet he still has the real memory in his actual head, because Dumbledore thinks Harry can still get that out of him. So how do these two versions of the memory exist? When you’re pulling a memory out of your head, shouldn’t it physically leave your head?
Eric: It should.
Andrew: I don’t… but you’re duplicating it?
Eric: You’re right. It’s confusing.
Laura: Well, I mean, have you ever…? Think about a situation where maybe you were recounting a series of events to somebody, and perhaps you leave certain details out because they’re either not relevant or you don’t want that person to think poorly of you, or anything like that.
Andrew: [laughs] Right.
Laura: I think this is very similar to that. So we human beings are capable of having multiple versions of a memory, the one that we give people, and the one that we know is the actual series of events.
Micah: Right.
Andrew: And it’s interesting that this memory comes right after Tom Riddle altered somebody else’s memory permanently.
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: With seemingly no duplicate.
Micah: And exactly when did Dumbledore go calling for this memory from Slughorn? Was it prior that summer? To me, Slughorn holds the truth to what Voldemort is up to, and I’m surprised that he’s not more highly sought after by Voldemort, because you’d think that the person who told him about what it is that he now uses to be able to stay immortal, essentially, is still alive and well… and we know Slughorn is a bit on the run, but it seems like he would be more of a target to me.
Andrew: You’re right. But now he’s at Hogwarts, where he’s safe. Maybe that’s one reason he wanted to go to Hogwarts, even though he didn’t really want to.
Eric: That’s a great point. But I mean, maybe Voldemort should have disposed of him sooner, during the first war or something like that. We don’t get this impression… and Slughorn would be less able to be on the fence about the Death Eaters and all that now if he had been chased and hunted back then.
Micah: Right.
Andrew: Yeah. I was going to say maybe Tom Riddle just forgot, but he couldn’t possibly forget who told him about the Horcrux magic.
Eric: Yeah, you never forget your first.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: Wow. Anyway, so we hear the word “Horcruxes” in this chapter. It’s the first time, I believe, we hear it in the entire series, and in this memory in the movie, we don’t hear the word; we only hear it when Harry gets the real memory from Slughorn. Now, I don’t remember exactly how it plays out in the book, but it seems like now we have the key piece of information. Harry, for whatever reason, doesn’t even ask what a Horcrux is.
Andrew: Right.
Micah: Is the future memory just to find out the number that Voldemort may or may not have created? Because to me, now you have the information… and I don’t remember as readers, were we just, “Holy shit, what’s a Horcrux? Google. Let’s find out what this thing is.” Harry should be all over this, and he’s not. I think it’s a bit of oversight on his part.
Andrew: Well, and the book even goes out of its way to say that Harry felt there was nothing significant in the memory.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: There was this new word that Harry never heard before!
Laura: Well, Harry is still too busy being mad that Dumbledore won’t engage him about Snape and Draco.
Andrew: [laughs] “There was nothing significant. You know what was significant? Snape and Draco. What’s up with that?”
Eric: It’s just Dumbledore is the one failing to provide the context here. Horcruxes is obviously not only a piece of the puzzle, but the whole game, and Dumbledore fails to provide relevance. Harry is focused on Voldemort’s character, and Harry gets out of that memory, “Oh, okay, Voldemort tried to ask a question and got rebuffed.” That’s what he gets out of the thing; he’s like, “Oh, what a useless memory.” Dumbledore is supposed to be the one there who goes, “Well, no, no, here’s why what he was asking is important,” and then provide all the context in the world. Instead, he’s just letting Harry go, and then for months try and get this memory from Slughorn.
Andrew: Well, Micah, to get back to one of your questions, “Why does he need the memory? Is it for the number?” Yes, the number is extremely important, because they need to know how many Horcruxes are in play here. And you can’t go and defeat…
Micah: But do you think that Dumbledore knows that? What else…? Yeah, there could be something else in this memory that’s important, but there’s no way that Dumbledore knows that there’s a number tied to this.
Andrew: Why not? I mean, it’s a reasonable thing to look into.
Micah: Yeah, but I just think “Horcruxes”; that should give you enough to go… from Harry’s standpoint, I think it should have given him enough to go on. He should have asked Dumbledore, “What is a Horcrux?”
Andrew: No, I agree with that.
Micah: I mean, I’m assuming… maybe Hermione, he inevitably ends up asking, right? He asks somebody; it may be in the next chapter. But I just feel like he’s… to the point that was raised by… I don’t know if it was Laura, but he’s not on his game. He’s too focused… he’s too sidetracked by Draco and Snape, and this memory is just… he doesn’t even think it’s significant.
Andrew: I’m wondering if maybe it was J.K. Rowling trying to throw us off the trail for some reason, just to surprise us a little later on.
Eric and Micah: Yeah.
Andrew: But yeah, I don’t know. It seems very glaring of a thing.
Eric: At this point, Dumbledore has already encountered two Horcruxes and destroyed two himself, or the diary was destroyed by Harry, but Dumbledore has held in his hands the remains of not one but two Horcruxes – the diary and the ring – and so he does already know that there are multiple Horcruxes, and is actively leaving Hogwarts in search of at least one other. So having the final number is sort of helpful, but at the end of the day, if canon is to be believed, and Pottermore and all the various supplemental material, Voldemort never actually had seven Horcruxes, and certainly not before he died. I think either Harry was supposed to be the seventh one, or something went wrong or whatever, but he never really got seven at once, and by the time he makes one out of Frank Bryce’s murder – which I think is when Nagini becomes a Horcrux after his revival – the diary has already been destroyed, so there’s never quite seven Horcruxes.
Micah: But it’s his desire to create – he asks specifically about – seven.
Eric: Yeah, it’s true.
Laura: I think Dumbledore is also just trying to get the full context of what Tom was told.
Andrew and Micah: Right.
Laura: Because that might ultimately give Dumbledore a clue about where another one might be.
Andrew: He’s got to do his due diligence here.
Laura: Yeah, and also, this is investigative, right? So he’s trying to determine, “Okay, I’m pretty sure Slughorn did actually tell Tom about Horcruxes and provide him the impetus to get started down that path, but I can’t blame him for that – or I can’t express the role that he played in that – without having definitive proof.”
Andrew: I just want to jump back to altering memories. It makes me wonder… so you can alter your memory and then put it back in your head. If that’s how it works, this would be great in terms of dealing with any mental health issues that you struggle with. [laughs] Maybe you want to get over some guilt, or you want to stop thinking about something that makes you really sad. If you can just adjust or wipe your own memory, that would be fantastic.
Laura: Well, you kind of can, because actually, when you have memories, you’re not actually remembering the event as it happened; you’re remembering the last time you remembered it.
Micah: Right.
Laura: So people’s memories do naturally change over time.
Andrew: Yeah, but I’m just speaking broadly about dealing with issues that really tear you up. This would be great to have in the real world. And is there even therapy in the wizarding world? Is therapy just altering your memory so you don’t have to deal with it anymore?
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: Well, I mean, the way the Pensieve is first described, I think, in Book 4, is you can literally take a memory out and then it will not be in your head anymore. Dumbledore himself says he keeps a Pensieve because of that reason, that he finds himself having too many thoughts at times. There we go, Dumbledore boasting about how intelligent he is again. But you can take it out of your mind completely, so you wouldn’t even need to modify the memory of a traumatic event; you would simply remove it and then be mostly cured.
Andrew: Well, maybe if you want to remember an old flame, you can just alter it to remember just the good parts, and not the part where they went and found somebody else [emotionally] and it wasn’t you.
[Laura laughs]
Micah: Yet, there is tremendous guilt on Slughorn’s part, despite the fact that he’s altered this memory.
Andrew: Yes.
Micah: There’s a great scene in the movie with the fish, and the whole story about how Lily was the one who gave it to Slughorn, and that the day he came down and the fish wasn’t in the bowl anymore was the day that she died. And I just… he feels a tremendous amount of guilt and a tremendous amount of regret, and I would say even some embarrassment over the fact that he was the one essentially – not that Tom wouldn’t have found another way or learned about them through another means – but he gave Tom the tools from an academic standpoint in order to be able to go and create these Horcruxes. He validated what Tom had already clearly learned, and I think that eats away at him.
Laura: Yeah, and it is embarrassing, because it was all because he’s very vulnerable to flattery, which is the same way that Harry eventually builds up the sort of rapport to get what he needs.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: I also found it interesting, too, that in this chapter, and really throughout this book, there’s a huge focus on two former Heads of… well, Snape is the current Head of Slytherin; Slughorn was the Head of Slytherin. Both were Potions Masters, and yet they’re both very integral, one in the rise of Voldemort, the other in the fall, so I think there’s a lot of comparisons to be made between the two.
Andrew: So final thing that happens in this chapter: As their meeting ends, the Phineas portrait questions why Harry could do something that Dumbledore can’t, and Dumbledore replies, “I wouldn’t expect you to.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: And Fawkes cries again, just like she did earlier in the chapter, and again, commenting on loyalty. But I wonder if this time it’s the other way around. I wonder if Fawkes is commenting on… or responding to Dumbledore’s loyalty to Harry?
Laura: I think so.
Andrew: Yeah? Okay.
Eric: Maybe Harry is a secret Dumbledore.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Wow.
Laura: Oh, God. Please no.
Micah: They are descended from the same line.
Andrew: Coming in Quidditch Through the Ages: the movie series.
[Laura laugh]
Eric: I mean, why does Fawkes care about Harry? Because Dumbledore cares about Harry.
Micah: It is also worth mentioning really quickly that Harry – again, we were talking about fan service earlier – asks Dumbledore about using Legilimency or Veritaserum to try and get this memory from Slughorn, and I don’t disagree with this. Call the Ministry, get the Aurors down there, do some work on Slughorn, tie him to a chair or whatever you’ve got to do, and get… this memory is everything to the series, to helping bring down Voldemort.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Micah: So I’m with Harry.
[Everyone laughs]
Laura: Hashtag.
Andrew: So we’re going to talk about memories a little more in a second; we asked patrons a question about whose memory they would dive into in the wizarding world. But first, our second sponsor is Robin Hood.
[Ad break]
Question of the Week
Andrew: So over at Patreon.com/MuggleCast, we asked a question about memories. Since this chapter is all about memories, we said, “Which wizarding world character’s memory would you want to enter and why?” And I said, “Bonus points if you can tell us how you’d extract that memory.” [laughs] Gabriela said, “We need McGonagall’s memories. She must have so many stories. She’s seen so many things in her life, not only as a witch, but also as a cat. Does she communicate with other cats while in cat form?” Alex said, “I’d like to see Dumbledore’s childhood so we could sort THIS WHOLE AURELIUS DUMBLEDORE THING OUT!”
Laura: Yeah, that’s a good one.
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Vinz said, “Hagrid. He does a lot of errands for Dumbledore and goes off grid sometimes. I am curious what adventures he has when he does. Also, I want to see his memories during his school days. I know we’ve seen bits and pieces of it during Chamber; maybe a memory of his school days before he was expelled.”
Micah: How about from Jessica Hardy? “I’d like to see Draco’s when he was indoctrined into the Death Eaters. Was he excited? Scared? Was he only doing it for his parents, or did he really believe in Voldemort? Was there an initiation ceremony? How would I extract it from him? Well, I’m blonde, and I think he likes blondes.”
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: That’s why Eric went blonde recently.
Eric: Yep.
Andrew: Doug England said, “Any of James Potter’s memories after Snape’s worst memory. I think most of what we see of James is tainted because it comes from Snape’s perspective. So anything that would show how he went from a Snape-bullying, immature 15-year-old, to Head Boy, or how he finally won Lily over, or why a pure-blood wizard with a hefty inheritance would risk everything to become an original member of the Order of the Phoenix.” And this, Doug, is why people want some Marauders stories from J.K. Rowling.
Micah: Yeah. And Virtuous Steve “would love to see the world through Luna’s eyes. Quirky, unpredictable, but true essences shining through (like disguised Harry at the Weasley wedding).”
Andrew: You can read more of people’s answers over at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. Thanks to everybody who participated. We do those questions from time to time to get some answers from people that we then read on the show.
Connecting the Threads
Andrew: So let’s connect some threads here. There are a lot.
Micah: There are a lot, and we’re getting towards the end of Chamber of Secrets too. [laughs] There’s only, I think, one more chapter, so we’ll have to do our best to tie what happens in the future of Half-Blood Prince back to other chapters in Chamber of Secrets. So Chapter 17 of Chamber of Secrets is called “The Heir of Slytherin,” and of course, this chapter is all about Tom Riddle. Harry confronts a younger version of Tom Riddle in both chapters, and he unknowingly destroys the first of Voldemort’s Horcruxes in Chapter 17 of Chamber of Secrets, and he learns the word “Horcrux” in Chapter 17 of Half-Blood Prince.
Andrew: I can’t believe all this.
Micah: Chapter 17 of Half-Blood Prince begins with, and Chapter 17 of Chamber of Secrets concludes, in McGonagall’s office. So the trio – well, the trio of Harry, Ron, and Ginny – Apparate into McGonagall’s office in the beginning of Half-Blood Prince, and of course, they return to McGonagall’s office after they escape the Chamber of Secrets. And again, interesting that it was that pairing, those three. Not a coincidence. And the last one – we talked about this, I think – Fawkes and Harry’s loyalty to Dumbledore really shines through in both chapters. It is his loyalty that calls Fawkes into the Chamber of Secrets to help him out, and we see that again in this chapter of Half-Blood Prince, with the little cry that Fawkes makes.
Andrew: I’ll never be over how she did this.
Laura: I know.
Andrew: This is just constantly crazy to me.
Laura: I want to know what the process is.
Andrew: Right.
Laura: Is this something where she sat down when she was writing Half-Blood Prince and then referred back to what she’d already written and planted all these Easter eggs? Or was this already planned as far back as when she wrote Chamber of Secrets?
Micah: What was the line…? I forget; she gave some quote where she said that this book could have been the second in the series, or something to that effect, right? The plotline of Half-Blood Prince was initially supposed to be used for Chamber of Secrets, but it gave too much away early on? Is that…?
Eric: That’s right.
Andrew: Something like that, yeah.
Eric: Yeah, that’s right.
Andrew: Crazy, crazy.
Micah: But what’s it called? Ring theory? Is that what connects…?
Eric: Yeah, ring theory – literary alchemy, it’s referred to – but yeah, the idea that you’d have these concentric circles within a set that relate to each other more specifically. It also just has to do with the way that stories are told, things like the rule of threes, that are most more powerful if repeated.
Laura and Micah: Yeah.
Eric: The parallels are really shocking.
Laura: Yeah, and then just from a literary perspective, this would be known as a frame narrative, wherein Books 1 and 7, 2 and 6, 3 and 5 call back to each other.
Andrew: Interesting.
MVP of the Week
Andrew: All right, MVP of the Week now. Mine is Fawkes for marking loyalty. That was one of the most beautiful moments in this book.
Micah: I gave mine to Morfin, just because… I mean, he got taken advantage of by Riddle, by Dumbledore…
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: The guy, just despite everything that he stood for, he just still… I don’t know. I just gave him the MVP, mostly because…
Andrew: It’s like a sympathy MVP.
Eric: I mean, I was going to say…
Micah: Mostly because, yeah, the other three were already written, and I had to pick somebody else.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Andrew: Aw, poor Morfin.
Eric: Micah, stand up for your guy! Like Dueling Club. Morfin, at least, lasts a long time in Azkaban.
Micah: Yeah, but he probably likes it in Azkaban.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Eric: Well, there you go, making the most of his situation. I gave mine to Tom Riddle – the MVP who clearly owns Morfin – really just thinking on his feet. I don’t think he arrived there with the intent of framing Morfin for the murder that he was about to commit of his father, but nevertheless, that’s what happened, and I think it’s really, really accomplished magic, the fact that Morfin, for the rest of his life, thought that it was he who had done it, and it’s just pretty clever. So props to Tom Riddle for being 16 and having lots of advanced magic.
Laura: And I chose Dumbledore because, like it or not, everything Dumbledore does is by design.
Andrew: Love him.
Rename the Chapter
Andrew: And now let’s rename the chapter. Mine is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 17, “CA-CAW! CA-CAW! CA-CAW!”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: That’s the Ilvermorny chant, if I’m not mistaken.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Andrew: Yeah, I ripped it from Ilvermorny. My apologies.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: Nice. Not sure how to follow that, but…
[Andrew and Laura laugh]
Micah: We should have let you go last. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 17, “Homework, Harry.”
Eric: Okay, mine’s a little bit of a stretch, but screw it. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 17, “More Fin.”
Andrew: Oh, I get it. I think.
Eric: Yeah, we get More Fin in this chapter.
Laura: Mine is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 17, “Abstinence.”
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Andrew: The best way to prevent a child or a hangover.
Laura: Also, I mean, Dumbledore is abstaining quite a bit.
Andrew: [laughs] Yeah, that was some foreshadowing.
[Eric and Laura laugh]
Micah: Wow. I just thought of another one.
Laura: What is it?
Micah: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Chapter 17, “Not my memory, you bitch.”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: There you go.
Quizzitch
Andrew: All right, now it’s time for some Quizzitch.
Eric: Cool. Last week’s question was: How much do Apparition classes cost? And based on the sign that was on the common room door in this chapter, we find out that they cost 12 Galleons for the entire class. I did do a little bonus secondary question: How much is that per week? And people got that question right as well. So classes last 12 weeks, they’re 12 Galleons, which means one Galleon per week is the cost of Apparition lessons.
Andrew: That’s a great deal.
Eric: Yeah!
Andrew: Think of how much you save on travel by learning how to Apparate. And time.
Eric: Gosh, yeah. And you don’t burn any fossil fuels, presumably, so it’s a green effort, green footprint.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: But the people who got the 12 weeks correct: Real Slim Brady, Marley’s Not a Muggle, and Neil Da Grass Tie Son on Twitter. The people who broke it down, one per week: HufflePuffin, Niagara Love, Fluffy McNutters, Jenniffler, Lame Miserables, Megan, Count Ravioli, Towering Tyler, Erica, Young Susie Blood, Charlie Father of Dragons, The Ravenclaw Hobbit Guy, Sarah, and Retta Gamboe. And speaking of Retta Gamboe, she wrote in: “Apparition lessons cost 12 Galleons, or one a week. When you asked for the weekly breakdown, I was so nervous that I was going to have to do math with the 29 Knuts to a Sickle and 29 or 17 Sickles to a Galleon… really glad it wasn’t that difficult! #Quizzitch.” So that’s glad. And we even had a guy, Robert, The Robert Glass, who wrote in and said – Jeopardy answer, by the way – “What is 12 Galleons total?” And he actually did the conversion to US dollars, and said, “One Galleon per week, or $79.68 USD.”
Andrew: Wow.
Micah: Well, that’s way more expensive.
Andrew: I remember back in the day I think CNN had a currency converter on their site. It was so cool. I’m googling it now; it doesn’t look like they have it anymore. But BeyondHogwarts.com does, as well as the HP Lexicon. [laughs] I don’t know how they get these conversions, but good work. Probably just make it up.
Eric: [laughs] Yeah, I think there’s a good long history of interviews of people asking how much a Galleon costs.
Andrew: And J.K. Rowling just pulls a random number out of her head. [laughs]
Eric: Oh, yeah. She’s like, “Oh, it’s five quid,” or whatever.
Andrew: I mean, how would she know?
[Laura laughs]
Andrew: I mean, this is crazy. On the Lexicon you can convert from any currency in the world.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: What? Come on. That’s not… come on. Man, I love it.
Eric: Well, if you type in the cost of Apparition lessons in Brazilian currency, you get the release date for the next Fantastic Beasts film.
[Laura and Micah laugh]
Andrew: That’s a nice little Easter egg.
Micah: Don’t give anybody any ideas.
Eric: Oh yeah, sure, sure.
Andrew: All right, what’s this week’s question? [laughs]
Eric: This week’s question: What is the name of the celebrity Apparition instructor Micah talked about? But yeah, that’s it. Just an easy one next week.
Andrew: You should have asked: What’s the currency from South Korean to Galleon?
Laura: For extra points, you could convert your student loan debt into Galleons.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Oh my God, that’s the next… we’re going to create that on Hypable. That’s going to be a Hypable exclusive tool.
Eric: Oh my God. [laughs]
Andrew: Just in time for tax season.
Laura: Don’t remind me.
Andrew: How about that? A tax… how many Galleons do you owe to the IRS? [laughs]
Eric: Oh no.
Andrew: If you would like to contact us about anything we discussed today, just hit up MuggleCast.com. We have a contact link right at the top. You can also just email us, MuggleCast@gmail.com, or call us; 1-920-3-MUGGLE. That’s 1-920-368-4453. You can also mail us the old fashioned way, with pen and paper. Our P.O. Box is 4044 North Lincoln Avenue, Box #144, Chicago, Illinois, 60618. Just address it to MuggleCast. We are going to record a bonus MuggleCast in just a moment that’ll be available at Patreon.com/MuggleCast. We release two pieces of bonus audio per month in case you want more, and it’s a way to say thank you to those of you who support us. We have lots of benefits in the works for the new year; we’re excited to solidify those and announce them. Thanks, everybody, for listening. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: I’m Micah.
Laura: And I’m Laura.
Andrew: We’ll see you in two weeks. Bye-bye.
Eric, Laura, and Micah: Bye.